100 Buttercream Flowers

Book excerpt: Let your cake decorating skills bloom with help from the world-renowned experts and authors of The Contemporary Buttercream Bible. Learn to pipe one-hundred different buttercream flowers—from azaleas to zinnias—to showcase on your cakes with this complete visual reference book. Each flower is demonstrated on a cupcake, with five full-scale projects to show you how to combine your flowers into a masterpiece cake. In this aspirational yet accessible guide, the authors demonstrate how to build up each flower using simple piping techniques that even the novice cake decorator will be able to achieve. All the basics are covered to get you started—how to make stable buttercream icing, advice on coloring and flavor, how to fill a piping bag, and more essential techniques. Valerie and Christina then demonstrate in step-by-step photographic detail how to create each flower and how to use your newfound skills to produce stunning cake designs. The flowers are presented through the color spectrum so when you look through the book, you’ll see a lovely rainbow effect. “A wonderful encyclopedia that can be used as reference or jumping off point for the experienced decorator as well as an all-in-one resource for intermediate or even ambitious beginners.” —Pink Cake Box University “The best book on decorating buttercream icing that I own . . . The step by step directions make sure there is no guessing as to how to do each flower that is illustrated.” —Red Kettle Cook